The Man Who Built the World

by Chris Ward

  Red chuckled, his laugh bleak and fractured like the batteries still whirring inside a broken remote control car, the little motors still spinning even when the thing itself was finished. The laugh of a desperate man. The laugh of a man who had nothing left to lose.

  ‘Come on then, I’m waiting.’

  8

  Rachel seemed to stumble every five or six metres, tripping on potholes and splashing muddy water up her legs. The light didn’t get any closer and the rain just got worse and worse. Her hair had slicked to her face like sticky seaweed, and if she hadn’t felt so wet and grim she would have sat down and given up all together.

  The lane angled down towards a distant river, the roar of churning water marking its steep passage down a rocky slope towards the Tamer estuary. Plymouth couldn’t be far off, she thought, ten miles perhaps, as the crow flew.

  She would much rather be there. A real city, full of real people, and cars, and noise, and all the other things Rachel loved about cities but hated about the countryside. Street lighting, cash machines and McDonalds drive–thru restaurants. A murky, soggy moor in the middle of nowhere just couldn’t compete.

  ‘I’ll get Matt and get out of here,’ she muttered to herself, hobbling towards the distant light. ‘If I ever get there.’ She paused for a second to rest her aching foot, and peered up into the grey darkness. ‘Goddamn it, how can it be misty as hell and rain at the same time? Jesus Christ.’

  Her thoughts turned to Matt, really to help her forget the pain in her ankle and her wrecked car, now some hundred yards behind her. How would he react to her coming here? Would he want to see her? She shook her head, not wanting to think about it too much. They had not parted on good terms. The rift that had been growing between them for several months had been widened by his sister’s sudden death, when the tragedy should have pulled them together. Their parting had been that of two people who didn’t expect to see each other again, no matter what Rachel had felt at the time. It hadn’t been see you soon. It had been goodbye.

  She started off again, walking towards the distant light, wondering if she was actually dead and this was the tunnel people talked about. The light at the end, arms reaching for her, pulling her through to some euphoric paradise on the other side, leaving all the rain and the misery behind.

  Well, it’s a bloody long tunnel, she thought.

  The lane continued down towards the sound of rushing water. The light seemed to move off to her right as an embankment rose to that side, huge and dark and smelling of peaty earth, and she realised the lane was curving around into some sort of carved-out area, like an old quarry, or an open-cast mine. The light came from in there.

  She slowed her already snail-like pace even further as the light dropped out of sight behind the rise of the embankment, enveloping her in darkness.

  ‘Now it gets fun,’ she whispered to herself, unable to shake a sense of foreboding, the feeling that something unpleasant waited just around the corner. What choice do I have?

  The sound of the river had reached fever pitch. Looking downhill into the blackness, Rachel was convinced she could see something glittering there. The river reflecting the light. There was only one light she had seen since she got here.

  She moved closer to the tall embankment, now sheared off and held back by wire netting to allow for the lane. It gave her comfort, something to use for a guide. If she lost her way she might wander out here all night. The air had got colder with the onset of heavy rain; a night caught out here would give her hypothermia.

  With one hand on the wall of the embankment, she moved forward, trying to ignore the thick, muddy water dribbling down the steep slope and through her fingers. She envisaged worms there, bugs –

  She squeezed her eyes shut to block the thought from her mind, and when she opened them again a few seconds later a house stood in front of her.

  Even close up, the outside light that had guided her here was hazy and indistinct through the fog, but she could see another light on in a downstairs window. Relief filled her. A black Nissan car sat in the driveway out the front of a garage, while a set of outbuildings nestled into the hollow to her right. Beyond the garage a little garden stretched away, and she didn’t doubt it led right down to the river.

  She hobbled across the driveway towards the front door, which she could see from her vantage point stood slightly ajar.

  The appeal of shelter or rest or at least a phone call to get help overrode the feeling of dread that filled her as she put one hand on the door and pushed it inwards. She didn’t care anymore, she just wanted to get out of the rain.

  She tried to raise her voice to shout for help, to make someone inside aware of her presence, but found the damp air had left her nothing but a bubbly croak, as though a slippery thing like a wet fish or a slug were wriggling at the back of her throat. She took her chances, and limped forward into the room.

  ###

  Bethany’s Diary, Sept 10th, 1999

  My child is almost due. I can feel it kicking sometimes, wanting to get out. Oh, if only I wanted it too.

  Mother – I want to hate her, but much as I want to, I can’t. She is right, right about everything despite the years of lies – came back to me after leaving me months alone. She’d been ill, she said, didn’t want to come near me for fear of what might happen. She lied, I think. She just couldn’t face me, didn’t know what to say.

  Yesterday she came back. She needed to speak with me, she said, needed to speak with me desperately, and today I went out to find her in the forest. We met up in the chapel, behind her grave.

  We talked, and now she has gone, and the thought of having my child sickens me. We left on bad terms, Mother and I, but I do not hate her for her words. I am thankful that she told me, thankful that at last the truth is out, even if it is a truth that blackens my heart to the bottom of my soul.

  She could have lived. She might have been weak, have struggled at times, may have had to steal a little soul from people now and then, but never enough to hurt them. Never enough to sadden them, cause them pain. She could have dealt with her mortal corruption had it not reached another level, a place from which there was no return, were her body and soul not violated and cheated. Her body didn’t fail her because of people’s words, and for this knowledge more than anything else, I ache to hate her.

  I could have spoken. I could have used my voice, been part of the world around me. I may have become ill more often than a normal child, may have been weak at times, but I could have lived as those around me lived.

  I could have had a normal life.

  I stayed silent at first because of instinct, because I was different from this world I lived in and because until I could learn to trust it I could never let myself become part of it. Later, I kept my silence through fear of what I might become should I break it, and my mother never told me otherwise.

  You see, she couldn’t tell me. The shame hung too heavy on her shoulders.

  I can speak now, speak if I want, and in quiet corners I do, practicing the words aloud for the first time, rolling them over my tongue. It is so different from the way I speak to Mother with my mind; the words feel big and fat and sometimes cumbersome, but other times elegant and graceful, as though I speak pure silk. A wonderful thing, is language . . .

  Yes, I can talk now, should I choose. Only now I find I have nothing to say.

  Soon now, soon. A couple of weeks more, maybe less. After my child is gone I will follow Mother. If I do not, I fear I will follow the same route into suffering that she followed before her merciful death. For my corruption is the same as hers.

  Betrayal by our own kind.

  9

  The first second spent waiting in the murky darkness of the room seemed to last about an hour, the second a week, the third a month. Matt had no idea how he coped with the infinite passage of time as he waited in that place, only that somehow he did, crouched in the dark; that somehow the endless seconds passed. Unsure what he would do when the time came, wh
ich he knew it would, sooner or later, he could have had forever and his mind would have had no less chance to decide. He wanted the time gone, the moment come. He would let instinct guide him, aided by the ally of surprise, the only weapon he had left.

  He would know what to do, just as he had known to come here, known that of all the places in the village he could have chosen this was the one, this tiny cottage standing on the outskirts of the village, tucked away down a short lane that almost hid it from view.

  He hadn’t even seen it from the road, for of course no lights were on. Nobody was home yet. But they would be. Sooner or later they would come. And when they did, they would find him.

  Waiting.

  He concentrated. On making the time pass. On drawing his adversary closer. He concentrated, closing his eyes to focus.

  10

  Liana hadn’t told them everything. Only about Gabrielle.

  ‘You talk rubbish, bitch,’ Red said, again waving the gun in Liana’s direction. ‘My baby has no power to do anything. You’re sick. You’re fucking sick.’ He glared at her, daring her to reply.

  It was Ian that did. ‘Come on, Red! You’ve accepted just as I have that Gabrielle wasn’t quite . . . the same as us. That she was . . . different.’

  ‘Shut up, Ian!’ The gun waved again, making Ian freeze where he sat, on the verge of rising to his feet. Red’s eyes gleamed with something different: passion. ‘I don’t doubt that for a second! Gabrielle was . . . was special.’

  ‘And she was my wife.’

  ‘Come on, Ian. Don’t tell me you didn’t know what she was the first time you looked on her. She was perfect!’ Red’s face had turned light pink, the hard, leathery skin appearing soft beneath the ceiling light.

  Ian rose to his feet, anger blooming in his face as Red continued to speak.

  ‘I would have killed you for her. If she were here now I would gun you down for her if I thought for a moment she would love me . . .’ Tears streamed down Red’s face.

  ‘Red –’

  ‘SIT DOWN!’

  Red swung the gun up, cocked it, and pointed it at Ian. ‘Or I’ll swear you’ll not speak again!’

  Ian lifted his hands and backed slowly away. He lowered himself back on to the couch. Liana looked across at him, lips trembling with terror.

  Red took his own seat again. ‘Jealousy. That’s it, isn’t it?’ he said, turning to Liana. ‘You and that sister of yours are just two pathetic old spinsters who can’t have a baby for themselves, so you thought you’d steal mine.’

  Liana sighed. ‘That’s not true. You have to understand, we want to do what’s for the best. But we have duties beyond what you can understand. We have a duty to Gabrielle, and now to Bethany.’

  ‘Leave her out of this.’

  Liana shook her head. ‘I can’t. Not now.’

  ‘Just shut up or I’ll blow your fucking face off!’

  Liana fell silent, eyes lowering to the floor, too afraid of his gaze to watch him any longer. She reached out with her mind to check on Jack. He was still safe for now, but for how long? She couldn’t keep him hidden forever, she didn’t have the strength, and she couldn’t do anything else at the same time, it was too much for her. Where was Elaina?

  #

  They sat in silence for several minutes. Ian closed his eyes, meditated a little, tried to take himself away from here, back to a time when he had innocently roamed the forest as a young man, shooting at birds and rabbits with his air rifle, fishing in the river, picking berries, digging up roots, enjoying the earth and the woodland as though he and it were one, until the day he found a woman sleeping naked in a clearing, under a canopy of trees. Bathed in mottled sunlight, piles of fallen autumn leaves crisp and brown around her, a soft smile on her face. Her skin as white as pearls. Flawless. The curves and contours of her body smoother than the polished stones on a shingle beach.

  Gabrielle.

  I thought you’d fallen from the sky.

  His angel.

  You did.

  His very own fallen angel. An angel who changed the life of the young Ian Cassidy forever.

  The sound of the wind rushing in through an open doorway broke Ian’s reverie, and he looked up, aware of another presence, and the infinite distance of seconds. The fire flickered in the grate. Beside him Liana looked up, her mouth falling open but no words coming out, as though the entrance of the wind had left no space for any other sound.

  A woman lurched into the room, hair slicked to her face, clothes soaked, a small dribble of blood on her forehead, with one foot held tentatively up from the floor. He had seen deer and foxes, even the odd rabbit walk that way. A limp; her ankle was sprained or even broken.

  Ian saw an injured woman.

  Liana saw a stranger, a woman who was definitely not her sister.

  All Red saw was her empty arms.

  ‘Where’s my baby?’ He roared, and the gun had come up before he had made it to his feet, long before Ian or Liana had time to register the situation, before the woman in the doorway had even had time to glance up from her saturated body to look in his direction.

  ‘No!’ Liana and Ian screamed in unison.

  Recognition flashed into Ian’s mind at the same moment the gun went off.

  Even with the howling of the wind the sound was impossibly loud. In the confines of the living room Ian felt sure his eardrums had burst, and so the sound made by the bullet as it struck Rachel in the chest just above her stomach and the subsequent sound of her body slamming back against the wall, were both lost. Ian didn’t even hear Rachel scream.

  But as the sound faded, leaving his ears with a ringing sound like distant bells and the room filled with a smoky, cobalt smell, he heard Liana scream, horrified at the sight of the circle of blood that stained her beige wallpaper and the spots on her carpet and sofa, and of the stranger who had slumped face-down across the floor. And somewhere, he heard another sound, not screaming exactly, but similar.

  Crying.

  It came from a room just off the hallway. Red heard it too.

  Liana stared in dumb shock at the bloodied woman. In the back of her mind she felt a dim awareness that the spell over the baby had been lost.

  ‘You fucking bitch.’

  Red’s eyes blazed demonic. The butt of the gun swung around in an arc and struck her a vicious blow across the face. She made a grunting noise that sounded more like a cough, and collapsed backwards into Ian’s arms.

  ‘He was here all the time. You devils.’

  Red stalked out of the room. Liana moaned, struggling to stay conscious. Blood ran from a fresh wound across her cheek.

  Ian wanted to cry out in anger. Not for any one person in particular, but for them all, for everyone in that room with the possible exception of himself. For Red, driven to madness, Liana, whom he knew had probably done what she had done for what she, at least, thought a good reason, whether it was right or not.

  And of course for the woman who lay on the floor between himself and the space that still stank of Red’s presence. He now recognised her, despite the rain, the blood.

  Matthew had shown him a picture only yesterday, after all.

  Of his wife and children. Of his beautiful family.

  ‘Hello Rachel,’ Ian whispered, feeling more useless than he had ever felt before.

  Red came back into the room, holding a bundle in his arms. Tears flowed freely down his cheeks. Despite the burning hatred that had followed the moment Rachel’s blood had first splattered on the spotless wall of the lounge, Ian couldn’t help but feel a deep sorrow for his friend. A terrible, tragic, sorrow.

  ‘He was here all the time. She – she – bewitched us.’ He lifted the gun in one hand, leveled it at Liana’s writhing body. ‘Die, you evil, evil woman –’

  Ian moved quicker than he could ever have imagined at such a moment, pushing his own body across in front of Liana’s to shield her. He lifted a hand, the effort so, so hard, his strength and resolve all but gone.


  ‘No, Red.’ He wanted to say more, to give his friend a reason, but nothing came. His simple humanity refused to let Liana Meredith be gunned down like a dog in the street.

  The gun stayed leveled. Ian could see down the dark tubes of its twin barrels. He waited.

  The gun dropped. ‘For the past, Ian. For the past. Otherwise you’d already be dead.’ He glanced down at the bundle in his arms. Ian heard a faint cooing sound. The boy was his grandson. His heart wanted to burst.

  ‘I’ll be going now,’ Red told him. ‘And I’m taking my son.’

  Ian opened his mouth to speak, but Red had already fled out into the rain. The front door slammed shut. Liana moaned beside him, and he propped her up on the sofa, glancing at the growing swelling beneath her eye, and the blood that ran down her face. Her injuries were bad, but she would have to wait.

  He crawled across the floor to Rachel. Trying so hard to be delicate, but in the same moment desperate to discover the extent of her injuries, he rolled her on to her back. She flopped over as though dead, and he glanced down at her front, the clothes there dark with blood. He looked up at her face, expecting to see the vacancy of death in her eyes.

  ‘Help me,’ she whispered.

  Alive. God only knew how, but somehow the bullet must have missed her main arteries, the major organs. Without doubt she was hurt badly, but even a serious wound was better than the killing blow he had expected. His shotgun (his shotgun) was high caliber and could rip a rabbit open from eighty yards. At close range, any torso shot should have left an exit wound the size of a saucer. It should have been fatal.

  She had lost a lot of blood, and he ripped open her shirt to assess the severity of her wound. Blood oozed rather than pumped from the ragged opening just below her right breast, confirming the shot had missed an artery. She had been about as lucky as anyone could have hoped. Ian turned back to Liana.